Alex Bally, has over forty years experience in the profession. He is president of abcd LLC, a product development firm he founded in 2000.
Currently, he is a partner in Lifespan Healthcare LLC., and Atlanta. Ga. based manufacturer of equipment management solutions for patient care. Since leaving Bally Design in 2000, he is an occasional consultant to this award-winning design and product development firm in Pittsburgh he founded in 1972. By focusing on innovative product creation using the highly successful PVMSM process, Bally Design has assembled a loyal, multinational clientele.
During his tenure at Bally Design, Alex focused much of his attention on technology-based hospital and medical equipment. Some of this work has been characterized by innovative techniques, such as, a method for documenting and recording user behavior during surgical procedures using inconspicuous over-head time lapse recording and extensive mock scenarios to "pre-enact" products in simulated or real environments while they are still in their "soft," conceptual state. This process has been applied in areas such as anesthesia, intensive care, neonatal care, heamodialysis, coronary care and ventilation.
From 1981 to 1990, Alex was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design headed up the CMU Design Department from 1987 to 1989. In order to devote more time to his practice, Alex resigned this tenured position at CMU in 1990.
Alex is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the national professional association for industrial designers. He was instrumental in founding the Society's Western Pennsylvania Chapter and served as its first chair. As a member of the IDSA publications committee, he contributed to Innovation, the Society's journal. A past vice president of IDSA, he served on the organization's board of directors from 1979 to 1987. He is past chair of IDSA's consumer products technology transfer committee. In 1990, he was named a Fellow of IDSA.
Alex has been a speaker at several interface conferences jointly sponsored by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) and IDSA. He has published numerous papers on design. In 1990, Alex Bally was invited to give a workshop dealing with safety issues in hospital equipment at a conference sponsored jointly by ECRI, CITECH, HIMA, and the FDA/CDRH. In 1993, Alex was a keynote speaker at the International Conference on Technology Management, and he was a presenter at the 1993 Structural Plastics Technical Conference. He has published numerous papers on design and holds over 20 patents.
In 1959, Alex came to the United States from his native Switzerland to study industrial design at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology and at Southern Illinois University where he received his degree in design. Before setting up his own firm in 1972, Alex worked at the Westinghouse Corporate Design Center where he was responsible for the design of many medical and industrial products for Westinghouse divisions in the United States and in Europe. Earlier, Alex worked for Peter Muller-Munk Associates, Corning Inc, and Buckminster Fuller.
